I was horrible at the game when I started playing. Also had really bad gear fear. Even with 300 hours I only had 3 PMC kills. I was losing pretty much every gun fight. I thought I was destined to always suck and would complain, wondering and asking what I was doing wrong.
It all clicked for me around 500 hours in. While I'm still not the greatest at the game, I've started regularly wiping out 2 and 3 man groups as a solo player. I also completely lost the gear fear and always take my better stuff out now. I can move around the map confidently (before I was too scared to move and make noise and would even hide near my spawn for 20 minutes lol). Once you have confidence, it helps a lot with gun fights.
The only trick to getting better is to keep playing. This game takes a lot of time to learn. I've seen others say it also took them around 500 hours to start getting good at the game too.
